The Cause Behind the Cause

The Brazilian crisis and world geopolitics – Leonardo Boff

The theologist, Leonardo Boff publishes an important article denouncing the action of the U.S.A. in the coup against the Dilma Rousseff government.

It would be a mistake to think the crisis in Brazil arose only in Brazil. It comes within the balance of global forces of the so called new cold war involving principally the U.S.A. and China. The U.S. espionage, as revealed by Edward Snowden, included Petrobras and the pre-salt oil reserves and did not exclude President Dilma. This is part of the Pentagon strategy of covering all the spaces under the slogan ”one world under one empire”. Here are some points for us to reflect on.

In the global context there is a visible rise of the right throughout the whole world, from the U.S.A. itself and in Europe. In Latin America, one cycle of progressive governments is ending that lifted the social level of the poorest and that affirmed democracy. We are now seeing a rise of the right-wing that has already triumphed in Argentina and is pressuring all the South American counties. They speak, as we do, of democracy, but in fact they seek to make it insignificant to give way to the place of the market and internationalization of the economy.

Brazil is the principal target and the removal of President Dilma Rousseff is only one chapter of a global strategy, especially of the large corporations and by the financial system articulated with the governments of the developed world. The large Brazilian businesses want to see a return to the level of gains they had only under the neo-liberal policies prior to Lula. The opposition to Dilma and the support for her removal have the backing of big business. The São Paulo Federation of Industry under Paulo Skaf, the Federation of Industry of Rio de Janeiro, the São Paulo Federation of Commerce, the Brazilian Association of Electronic and Electrodomestic Industries (Abinee), business organisations of the states of Parana, Espirito Santo, Para and many business networks are openly campaigning for her removal and for the end of the kind of social democracy implanted by Lula-Dilma.

The strategy tried out against the “Arab Spring” and applied in the Middle East and now in Brazil and in Latin America, in general consists of destabilizing the progressive governments and aligning them to the global strategies as aggregated partners. It is symptomatic that in March 2014, Emy Shayo, an analyst of J.P. Morgan coordinated a round-table with Brazilian public relations professionals linked to the neo-liberal macro-economy under the theme ”How to destabilize the Dilma government”. Arminio Fraga, a probable Minister of Finance in a post-Dilma government comes from J.P. Morgan (Juarez Guimarães blog, ”Why the bosses want the coup”).

Noam Chomski, Moniz Bandeira and others have warned that the U.S.A. will not tolerate a power such as Brazil in the South Atlantic that has a project for autonomy, linked to the BRICS countries. The presence of a growing China, principal contender, in the various countries of Latin America, especially in Brazil, is of great concern to the U.S. foreign policy. Confronting another anti-power that the BRICS signify implies attacking and weakening Brazil, one of its members with unparalleled ecological wealth.

Perhaps our best analyst of international politics, Luiz Alberto Moniz Bandeira, author of “The Second Cold War – geopolitics and the strategic dimension of the United States” (Civilização Brasileira 2013) and this year’s “International Disorder” (from the same publisher) can help us understand the facts. He brought details of how the U.S.A. acts, ”It is not just the CIA… especially the NGOs financed by official and semi-official money such as USAID, the National Endowment for Democracy, act by buying journalists and training activists”. Also “The Pentagon’s New Map for War & Peace” enunciates the forms of economic and social destabilisation through the media, newspapers, social networks, businessmen and infiltration of activists. Moniz Bandeira clearly states that “I am in no doubt that in Brazil, the newspapers are being subsidised…and that journalists are on the pay list of the bodies mentioned above and many police and chiefs of police receive money from the CIA directly in their accounts” (Jornal GGN by Luis Nassif 09/03/2016). We can even imagine which newspapers these might be and the names of some journalists, completely aligned with the destabilizing ideology of their bosses.

The pre-salt oil field, the second largest oil and gas reserves in the world, is especially in the sights of global interests. The sociologist, Adalberto Cardoso from UERJ, in an interview to the newspaper Folha de São Paulo (26/04/2015) was explicit, “It would be ingenuous to imagine that there are no international geopolitical interests from the Americans, Russians, Venezuelans, Arabs. In this case, if the monopoly of exploration ends, the rules change. The impeachment is in the interest of forces that want changes in Petrobras: the big oil companies, international agents wanting to profit from the exit of Petrobras from the exploration of oil. Some of these agents want to remove Dilma“.

We are faced with the thought of a conspiracy, as we already know how the Americans acted in the military coup in 1964, infiltrated into social and political movements. It is not for nothing that the US Fourth South Atlantic Fleet is close to our waters. We must be aware of our importance in the world scenario, to resist and try to strengthen our democracy that represents less the interests of business and more the demands so long forgotten of our people and the construction of our own path to the future.